README
¶
SafeSQL
SafeSQL is a static analysis tool for Go that protects against SQL injections. This fork adds an extra option to print the queries found by SafeSQL.
Usage
$ go get github.com/echojc/safesql
$ safesql
Usage: safesql [-p] [-q] [-v] package1 [package2 ...]
-p=false: Print queries
-q=false: Only print on failure
-v=false: Verbose mode
$ safesql example.com/an/unsafe/package
Found 1 potentially unsafe SQL statements:
- /Users/alice/go/src/example.com/an/unsafe/package/db.go:14:19
$ safesql example.com/a/safe/package
You're safe from SQL injection! Yay \o/
$ safesql -p example.com/a/safe/package
SELECT * FROM foo
SELECT * FROM bar WHERE col = $1
How does it work?
SafeSQL uses the static analysis utilities in go/tools to search for
all call sites of each of the query functions in package database/sql
(i.e., functions which accept a string parameter named query). It then makes
sure that every such call site uses a query that is a compile-time constant.
The principle behind SafeSQL's safety guarantees is that queries that are
compile-time constants cannot be subverted by user-supplied data: they must
either incorporate no user-controlled values, or incorporate them using the
package's safe placeholder mechanism. In particular, call sites which build up
SQL statements via fmt.Sprintf or string concatenation or other mechanisms
will not be allowed.
False positives
If SafeSQL passes, your application is free from SQL injections (modulo bugs in the tool), however there are a great many safe programs which SafeSQL will declare potentially unsafe. These false positives fall roughly into two buckets:
First, SafeSQL does not currently recursively trace functions through the call graph. If you have a function that looks like this:
func MyQuery(query string, args ...interface{}) (*sql.Rows, error) {
return globalDBObject.Query(query, args...)
}
and only call MyQuery with compile-time constants, your program is safe;
however SafeSQL will report that (*database/sql.DB).Query is called with a
non-constant parameter (namely the parameter to MyQuery). This is by no means
a fundamental limitation: SafeSQL could recursively trace the query argument
through every intervening helper function to ensure that its argument is always
constant, but this code has yet to be written.
If you use a wrapper for database/sql (e.g., sqlx), it's likely
SafeSQL will not work for you because of this.
The second sort of false positive is based on a limitation in the sort of analysis SafeSQL performs: there are many safe SQL statements which are not feasible (or not possible) to represent as compile-time constants. More advanced static analysis techniques (such as taint analysis) or user-provided safety annotations would be able to reduce the number of false positives, but this is expected to be a significant undertaking.
Documentation
Source Files